Who can fill the digital divide gap?

The role of States, private entities and individual users.

Digital media generate new opportunities, but also new challenges for persons with disabilities while producing an impact on some core human rights – i.e. freedom of expression and opinion, privacy, data protection, human dignity and autonomy.

Such new challenges depend on either the shortages of the current legal and policy framework either on individual users’ behaviours online. Hence, one of the peculiarities of the digital environment is that the value of an online platform largely comes from the social networking provided by the participants – this is what distinguishes successful communities from “virtual ghost towns”.

Accordingly, it depends also on the sensitivity of private entities to address the accessibility concerns of their online platforms, as well as on the awareness of individual users to adopt all the tips and methods that improve the accessibility, for instance, of their own profiles on social media.